Situation
Heritage Manufacturing, Inc., a revolver manufacturer, needed to reproduce a part for a legacy gun. Because Heritage had no existing
CAD data for design assistance, the shop had to find a way to extract the dimensions of the housing and the loading gate of the gun.
The precise fit of those parts is critical to the function and safety of the gun.
SOLUTION
3D Scan Data
Heritage contracted 3DScanCo (www.3dscanco.com) to scan the loading gate and the housing and reverse engineer them into parametric CAD models.
3DScanCo used a high accuracy 3D Scanner to capture the dimensions and the bolt-hole locations of the parts. Using SolidWorks (www.solidworks.com) to reverse engineer the parts, the original design intent was captured in a digital 3D model.
RESULTS
CAD Data
The project resulted in a successful reverse engineered parametric SolidWorks model of the two parts.
Heritage was able to use the CAD data to manufacture new revolvers based on the legacy part and was also able to use the parametric nature of the SolidWorks files to design parts that can fit in and around the models.